.com. this photo was sent to me in e-mail in 2012 weeks after, ask the days after president rocco palma's reelected in 2012. it was at the top an e-mail from the christian coalition of america and i was struck by it at the time. he became right on the heels in between the election and thanksgiving and it had this caption underneath it. it said family in prayer, pennsylvania 1942. it was a black-and-white photo and a white family saying grace before a meal and bennett had this line of text further explaining the transition from the photo to the message first coalition of america.

it said this. it said we will soon be celebrating the 400th anniversary of the first thanksgiving and god has still not withheld his blessings upon this nation although we now richly deserve such condemnation. we have a lot to give thanks for but we often need to pray to our heavenly father and ask them to protect us from those enemies outside and within who want to see america destroyed. that is the message that comes from attaching this image right after the re-election of president barack obama in 2012. at the time i wasn't really working on the book quite yet but i immediately saved it as it seemed to me a kind of artifact and assemble of a visceral reaction to the re-election of barack obama in 2012. part of the book is about unpacking like what's that about and we see these reactions. and just to throw that imagery to a previous time in a golden

era. what is behind that sense of nostalgia and loss and grief? the book is called "the end of white christian america" and to prevent some confusion what i mean by white christian america really is a metaphor for the whole cultural institutional edifice that was built not exclusively but primarily by white protestant christians in this country. it really did set the tone for the national conversation and really shaped a lot of of american ideals. it would be hard to walk very far without tripping over an institution that was started by white christian america, the ymca, the ywca, the boy scouts. what not the heart to find these things and yet these kinds of institutions in the world that they were really a part of has really passed from the american scene. so that's really what the book is about. you can see this in a number of

demographic ways. you can see the architecture. i'm going to focus on the demographics. if i could show you one chart it would be this one. this really shows us some real changes that happened just over the last eight years. shaded in this light gray. macrobarack obama's presidency, this is all white christians together percentage that all white christians protestants christians nondenominational orthodox all of together comprise of the american population. in 2459% of the country and by 2008 when president barack obama is running for election that number was 54%. today that number is 45%. it was 47% in 2014 and the next year the latest data shows it at 45% suggest during the last few election cycles during president barack obama's presidency we

have crossed this amazing threshold. we have moved from being a majority white christian country to a minority white person country in just a short amount of time. this is in fact even if people don't know the stats that well, think any white christians particularly white conservatives can feel the shift in their bones and this is part of the activity we are seeing pitches to put one word in a symbolic issue across the same time period support for marriage over the same period of time. if you go back to 2008 what you see is only four in 10 americans supported marriage when rocco palma's running for president in 2008 and the number today is 53% said we have gone from a country where four in 10 supported same-sex marriage to a a country where majority support same-sex marriage. that's a major shift in a short

amount of time. part of what the story in the book is telling is about unpacking the reactions and the anxiety around the reactions to demographic and cultural change that we have seen in the last decade of our nation's life. here's a look at the five finalists for this year's national book awards for nonfiction.

>> is part of the journalistic process to cultivate sources. the pentagon papers is one example of that. defense is also an important aspect of this. were i think this is noteworthy is julian assange who is back in the news recently because of his comments on the unfortunate murder that took place in washington d.c. just a couple of weeks it go.

assange had an interesting angle he unlike a journalist really dislike government and was very suspicious and was certain that there were underhanded dealings and that somehow publishing this is a radical transparency and would prove that all of us were up to no good and in fact both the guardian and "the new york times" had collaborated in the initial release of these cables were surprised to find that in fact there were no underhanded dealings. these were cables written by mid-level officers going about their duties sometimes with interesting approaches, with a writing style that was surprisingly readable and not bureaucratic and making efforts to understand the environment for which they had been posted and sending that information back to washington.

i thought there was a lot of eloquence involved that assange missed because of his own agenda. i part company with them in terms of thinking that there is a public service that's been performed here and somehow there is dirt that will come to light. there were surprising little dirt in this. it's interesting but it's not nefarious. >> it caught my attention in your book you did mention the guardian and you also mentioned david sanger of "the new york times." i wrote down the quote where he mentioned that they were eloquent and occasionally entertaining. he it was very interesting these reactions. on the other hand you have been italian foreign minister franco lefty who described november 28 quote as the september 11 of -- from what you have just described it didn't sound like

you view it as the same. >> we survived. but it's interesting that it wasn't a one-off. we had the dnc scandal a month or two ago. i think we could see a part of government life and the speed and the multiplicity of which we communicate with each other now not only with long cables à la george kennan but short e-mails, social media. all of that is going to be part of the body politic. understanding how to classify it and have been adjudicated and how to know when something needs to be secret and know when to share it is something i think is very much in debate. hillary clinton's e-mails ignited a lot of that debate and the volume at which we communicate with each other now is just crushing. the way in which we pacify and

the rest by things cannot continue. we have to find a new method to classify things. >> the wikileaks cable as the officers who decide what the gimpy which means that you are assuming that a person would know whether or not something would be highly damaging or just damaging or possibly not damaging at all. that office -- officer may not have sufficient information to make a judgment on that and a higher level classification the more likely you will have a readership that will be intrigued in interested. ..